14 February 2018

Where I fit in the political spectrum - updated

Update January 2009: When I started TYWKIWDBI in December of 2007, the circus carnival known as the "presidential primaries" was in full swing, so I thought it was important for me to "state for the record" what biases I might have. I explained that I was registered as an Independent and was supporting Ron Paul. Then I posted the following three graphs...

(2007 text) There are a number of online websites that allow one to assess one's position by answering a long list of questions. I completed one of these back in 2003, with the following result-

Another assessment site in October of 2005 showed me to be leaning ever so slightly libertarian -

The most recent one was last December, and I was squarely in the center -

So, that's "where I'm coming from." Not unbiased, certainly, but probably as much "in the center" as any person you're likely to meet. If you want to find out how you stand, try the quiz at this link... http://www.politicalcompass.org or at this one - http://www.okcupid.com/politics. It might be an interesting experience.

Update January 2009: I'm amused to note that I was such a "newbie" then that I didn't even post the links in clickable form. I'll correct that now. Here's the one for Political Compass, and here's the OKCupid one.

I'm posting this update today because the Weblog Awards are sending a flurry of new traffic here this week. There seem to be a couple hundred extra visitors per day, most of them wondering what this blog is about, and as a corollary, what this blogger is about. The charts above pretty well define me as a centrist on the political spectrum; I tend to have equal contempt for polticians of both major parties. Now that you know where I stand, I challenge you to go to the links and chart out your own political biases.

Update February 2018: I decided to take the test again, and found my position on the chart has changed slightly but not fundamentally:

I don't know whether I have changed, or whether the test standard reference points have changed (the questions are the same as in 2003), or in fact whether the repositioning of my dot is statistically significant.

Political Compass now offers a cartoon-amended chart to show where various well-known persons would be (approximately) situated on the chart:

There is an old Dilbert about the Myers-Briggs kind of four-way classifiers. Dogbert is presenting a chart whose axes are labelled "SMART/STUPID" and "CUTE/UGLY". He is telling the audience, "You'll notice that most of you fall into this quadrant right...down...here."

The axes on this grid are obviously undefined and undefinable in any rigorous manner.

That said, I am sorry to see you so close to the center, always the loneliest place in politics, more isolated and uninhabited than Antarctica, and I hope you eventually find a community that you can feel like you belong to.

I took the test the other day and I'm right about where you are--but of course there's so much biased language in the questions that it's hard to accept the quadrant categories. If they'd simply asked me, I'd have said I'm a yellow-dog Democrat.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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I'm using an old photo of my grandfather as an avatar; he would have been amused.
Readers - especially old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, and long-lost relatives - are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net